Join SPHR on Tuesday March 20th to learn who profits from the Israeli occupation, racist walls and checkpoints, settlements and prisons. Explore what BDS is, and learn how has it been used to take on the profiteers from state violence and repression. Learn about Dalit's support for boycotts within the Israeli movement, as well as some of the successes and challenges to taking on big corporations.

Who is Dalit Baum?

Dalit Baum, PhD, is an Israeli feminist teacher, BDS activist and corporate researcher. She is the the co-founder of Who Profits from the Occupation, and of the Coalition of Women for Peace in Israel, and she has been active with various groups in the Israeli anti-occupation and democracy movement, including Black Laundry, Boycott from Within, Zochrot, Anarchists against the Wall and Women in Black. She currently serves as the director of the ASFC Economic Activism Program.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This event is being hosted on the unceded lands of the S?wx?wú7mesh (Squamish), X?m?θk??y??m (Musqueam), and S?l?ilw?ta?? (Tsleil-Waututh) nations.

Overcoming NDP's shameful anti-Palestinian history

Mar 07, 2018 at 12:00 AM

The NDP leadership’s naked suppression of debate on the “Palestine Resolution ” is rooted in a long pro-Israeli nationalism history.

At last month’s convention the party machine blocked any debate of the Palestine Resolution, which mostly restated official Canadian policy, except that it called for “banning settlement products from Canadian markets, and using other forms of diplomatic and economic pressure to end the occupation.”

As I detailed previously, the Palestine Resolution was confusingly renamed, deprioritized and then blocked from being debated on the convention floor. The suppression of a resolution unanimously endorsed by the NDP youth convention, many outside groups and over 25 riding associations was the latest in a long line of leadership anti-Palestinian actions.

However, the first leader of Canada’s original social democratic party actually took a sensible humanist position, criticizing the colonialist/nationalist movement’s impact on the indigenous population. In 1938 CCF (the NDP’s predecessor) leader J. S. Woodsworth said, “it was easy for Canadians, Americans and the British to agree to a Jewish colony, as long as it was somewhere else. Why ‘pick on the Arabs’ other than for ‘strategic’ and ‘imperialistic’ consideration.”

As the host of CBC’s Sunday Edition, Michael Enright is one of the most influential intellectuals in Canada. He is educated, well travelled and thoughtful. Each Sunday, thousands of Canadians listen to his interviews and are influenced by his observations. So when he warns about the growing danger of Anti-Semitism in Canada, it is important. But on this point, argues Martha Roth, of Independent Jewish Voices Canada, Enright is mistaken.

Fifty years ago, Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick first shared his now-famous black-and-red poster print of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara with the world. The image quickly became a universal symbol of resistance and anti-oppression following Guevara’s death in 1967 and is recognized across the globe. Now, Fitzpatrick is poised to do it again.

This time, the subject of his art isn’t a revolutionary leader, like Guevara. It’s a 17-year-old Palestinian girl: Ahed Tamimi. A new print published on Fitzpatrick’s site—which is available to download for free—hails her as the “real Wonder Woman,” and the artist hopes it becomes as far spread as his earlier work.

The narrative of Ahed Tamimi, who has recently become the face of Palestinian child prisoners, reached a new low on the first day of 2018; Israel insisted that they will be charging the teenager and given the record of “Israeli justice”, that means she will almost certainly serve jail time. Ahed’s fate is the same as that of all the young Palestinian detainees, born into occupation and tyranny, having lived through a “butchered childhood”.

The story of Ahed reminds me of the young girl, perhaps 12 or 13, who narrated a lot of the movie “Jenin, Jenin” and faces the camera at the end of the movie to tell us in the most chilling terms, that she plans to fight for her people and will never forget nor surrender. She also adds: “I saw dead bodies, I saw houses destroyed, I saw sights which cannot be described…and now, after they ruined all my dreams and hopes-I have no life left!” That sequence of the movie has stayed with me since I first saw it in 2003.

The Palestine/Israel conflict is often presented as complex, long-standing (“they have been fighting for thousands of years,”) difficult to understand, and even unsolvable.

Yet for Palestinians and many other people, the issue could not be simpler or clearer: In the 1880s, a group of Europeans began to settle in and colonize Palestine, and with the help of the British and later the Americans, they began a long process of dispossessing the local indigenous population. In the 1880s, indigenous Arabs controlled 100% of Palestine. In 2014, Israel, the state set up by the European colonizers, controls 100% of this land.

This is not a question of competing religions but of land appropriation.

See Maps of Disappearing Palestine which appeared in Vancouver Transit ads:

Judge blaming Rachel Corrie for her own death highlights Israel’s impunity, family says

The Haifa District court ruled earlier today that the Israeli military is not responsible for killing American activist Rachel Corrie, and that Corrie was to blame for her own death.

“Even when she saw the mount of earth moving towards her, she did not move away. The accident was caused by the deceased,” said Israeli Judge Oded Gershon, as he read out a summary of the 62-page ruling in front of a packed courthouse and with Rachel’s mother Cindy, father Craig and sister Sarah sitting in the front row.